


The Altered Paths

by SherlockMalfoy



Series: The Scars on our Souls [3]
Category: Heroes (TV 2006)
Genre: Angst, Do-Over, Established Relationship, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Graphic Sex, heavily implied/referenced underage sex, minor character cameos, technically underage Peter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 14:09:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21375388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SherlockMalfoy/pseuds/SherlockMalfoy
Summary: With the timeline taking shape along a different path, Peter Petrelli finds himself confronted with revelations about The Company he never knew before. Meanwhile, Gabriel's struggling to maintain the balance in his sanity and the seeming normality of the life he's pretending to live again. The only thing that keeps him going is his long standing arrangement for Fridays with Peter.
Relationships: Peter Petrelli/Sylar | Gabriel Gray
Series: The Scars on our Souls [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1537978
Comments: 7
Kudos: 46





	The Altered Paths

**Author's Note:**

> Even though it's marked with the "Underage" warning, the Age of Consent in New York State is 17, which is how old Peter's body is (mentally he's like, 70 though. Yeah, it's weird). New York also does not have any _Romeo & Juliet Laws_, which is why in part 2 (_Variant Yesterdays_) Gabriel is like "No. You're still 16 and this state is REALLY strict on this".
> 
> So yeah, now I feel like a creeper for having to look that up when I was writing this story. But there you have it.

Peter balanced the pencil on his nose.

He was bored.

He was meant to be paying attention to the meeting at Primatech Hartsdale.

But he couldn’t be bothered. Not when he had plans that evening.

It had been four months since his “surgery” in Vegas that had corrected his back. It was helpful, his mother mused later, that her old friend couldn’t heal all of his accident scars. It made the lie more believable. Not that he didn’t try again while Peter was staying in Vegas after Peter had handed over his journal for the man to read. And photocopy very specific sections of it for his personal reference.

And now, he was sitting in on meetings with his mother. He noticed he was being kept away from certain individuals, but others he was encouraged to interact with. Like Kaito Nakamura. And a woman named Paula Gramble. It didn’t take long for Peter to realize his mother was grooming him to join The Company. Building alliances for him within her own faction so that should something happen to her, he had a strong backing against Arthur.

It was a fascinating situation, but also one that bored him. Because he had no intention of hanging around that long. It was educational nonetheless. What he learned now he and Gabriel could use later to protect themselves.

“I see young Mr. Petrelli has gone cloud chasing again,” Dr. Gramble said with a chuckle.

“He lives with his head in the clouds,” Angela said before picking up a thick folder and slamming it down on the table with a loud slap to get her fantasist son’s attention. “Peter! Pay attention!”

“Why? You’ve been talking in circles for hours. Bob wants to restart the research into the virus that none of you will name around me. Mr. Nakamura refuses to release classified assets from the Odessa vaults. Good call on that one, sir. Especially THAT asset. Trust me on this, you’re saving the world by being stubborn. Mr. Linderman’s trying to get you to fund the search for some guy named Teddy who… what was it? He’s a giant plutonium rod or something?” Peter said, rather disrespectfully, but accurately, recalling most of the meeting. “And then you’ve got Charlie over here pushing for the drug trials because his daughter’s some kind of walking aphrodisiac. All the while we’ve got an immortal madman locked in the basement who I’m not supposed to know about so Bob you might want to keep better track of Elle for the next few weeks because she’s a sneaky one that likes to go down and have chats with him.”

Peter looked from one person to another and returned to balancing the pencil on his nose. “And Susan Amman’s sleeping with my dad and doesn’t want anyone to know she’s spying for him like, every time she comes here. Did I miss anyone or anything?”

While having precognitive dreaming in his file was useful, his mother and Bob assuming he really had claircognizance was a hell of a lot more fun. For him.

“Learn some tact, Peter!” was all his mother could respond with before dismissing him.

Peter happily got up, looking smug as hell, and merrily walked himself out. He was still marveling at the fact he could walk all these months later. Never, he swore, would he take his legs for granted again. First the incarceration, then the Cure taking hold and leaving him with the Shakes. Then… well… he may joke about it sometimes in his darkest moments, but Peter never wanted to go through something like that again.

As he swiped his limited access badge and punched in his ident code into the box by the door, he thought he’d swing by the kiddie lounge where he’d first met Elle and Hiro, and learned somethin new about Simone. If only to annoy Elle. And maybe try to get Hiro to actually have a conversation with him. But he stopped at the door when he caught wind of… THAT smell. Yeah… nevermind.

Instead he veered towards somewhere he knew he wasn’t supposed to go. But what were they going to do? Stop him? They’d have to catch him first. Having been locked up here himself, he sort of knew where not to go and which cameras to look out for.

It was a quick pass by the labs to swipe an access card from a tech and he was making his way down to the cells. Elle wasn’t the only one that liked to get chatty with one of the prisoners.

It was a bit of a walk, all things considered. The specific prisoner he was looking for was kept isolated away from the others. No one to listen to him - not until a future Peter for some odd reason. Well, a future Peter that now wouldn’t exist.

Peter pressed against one of the walls to avoid the camera before reaching into his pocket for the one thing he’d learned never to leave home without. An extendable fork. Sometimes, the low-tech solutions were still the best solutions. He pulled it quickly and then reached up with it towards the plug in the back of the camera. Sliding the thin cord between the prongs, he twisted and unplugged the cable. Then, he pulled it down to untangle and repeated with the next cord. Once both audio and video output were safely neutralized, he stepped out from the wall and went to the intercom next to the cell’s window.

“Hello Adam.”

“Ah, Peter. Is it the first or the second meeting of the month? You start to lose track of the passage of time after twenty years of isolation.”

“You know, I still can’t figure it out.”

“Figure what out?” the blond man in the cell said from where he lay stretched out on his bed. “You’re quite a conundrum yourself. How is it a seventeen year old boy with no useful ability can sneak around and never get caught? I don’t know how many times I’ve had to listen to Kaito complain about the camera being unplugged.”

Peter shrugged. “Tell me again why you’re in this cell.”

“I tried to destroy something-”

“See, that’s where it gets confusing” Peter interrupted. “For some reason everyone else thinks it’s because you wanted to release it. Some sick way to heal the world. I just don’t get it.”

“Why as if you already knew? Normally this is the part where I’m accused of trying to destroy the world, not the virus. Usually by Kaito and Angela, actually…” Adam said, then turned over onto his side and propped his head up with his hand, the elbow pressed into the mattress. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you're really Kaito’s bastard.”

“Unfortunately I’m all Petrelli. Got the bloodwork to prove it.”

“Shame. Perhaps another time then, Peter Petrelli”

Peter cringed inwardly at the leer he received.

“Why do you keep visiting me, Peter?”

“Well for one, I’ve been stealing from you for nearly a year. Well, not me, but an associate. He’s already hit your caches in Delaware, Nebraska, and Michigan. He’s waiting to hit up the big one in Montreal until I can go with him.”

Adam sat up and glowered at him.

“And for second, I’m curious to see if my visions will change if I talk to you.”

“Visions? I’d have thought you would have gained your father’s ability.”

Peter raised a brow. “Which one?” he asked, genuinely curious about what Adam may know regarding his father. “He’s got so many.”

They bantered a bit more before Peter glanced at his watch and veered things back to the topic he wanted to know more about when he came down. “You had to have had help to get as far as you did for the virus. Who was it?”

“See that’s the odd thing isn’t it? Your mother and Kaito did actually. As did a few others. The risk of further experimentation was far too high. It needed to be destroyed or we were all at risk, even me. I am very much in favor of living. I have things to do. Centuries worth of revenge to get, all that.”

Peter weighed the information. On one hand, he knew Adam could be lying through his teeth. On the other, he hadn’t been locked up for thirty years yet, just twenty. To an immortal, such a length of time meant very little. “They betrayed you?”

“Yes. I don’t know why. If that strain were to fall into the wrong hands, we are all dead, Peter.”

The not-so-young man released the intercom and contemplated the potential of the situation before, and he hoped he wouldn’t regret it later, deciding to take another risk. He put his finger back to the button.

“What if I told you I might know who convinced them to betray you? And how he did it?”

“Is it one of your visions?”

“An assumption based on them, but not anything specifically.”

“So a wild guess then?” Adam rolled his eyes and shook his head, trying not to laugh. “I’ve been stewing over this for twenty years, and now some cocky teenager’s going to tell me what he thinks happened. Well, I’ve clearly nowhere better to be.”

“My father has advanced telepathy. Stronger than Maury Parkman’s. Nearly as strong as Parkman’s son will be.”

“You know this for certain?”

“I’ve seen him push thoughts into the hired help. And a secretary. Wouldn’t be all that surprised if he did the same to my mother and Kaito.” Peter frowned at the memories which witnessing the maid and the secretary’s sudden compliance with his father’s… orders had stirred up. Even now, just mentioning Matt reminded him of the last time he ever saw the man. The basement. The five years trapped behind The Wall. The entire reason it had all started - the man’s ability to make a person forget who they were, forget they were even dead it was… it was monstrous. “It wouldn’t be hard for him to make them even forget they were helping you entirely,” he added, shaking the thoughts loose and sending them back to the dark corner he kept them buried in.

Adam’s expression took on one of concentration as he thought over Peter’s words. And Peter watched him. Anger simmered down into confusion, then shifted into frustration and ultimately curiosity. And Peter waited to see what the man’s answer would be. Finally, when he was about ready to just give up and leave, he felt a wave of absolute rage wash over him from the man in the cell. But Adam controlled it very well.

“Why would Arthur do it? What would he have to gain? The Virus is Robert’s special project. Arthur has nothing to do with research and development. In fact he insisted I put him as the head of our legal team. I couldn’t fault him. He’s a damn good lawyer when he wants to be.”

Peter shrugged. Adam’s guess was as good as his own. “Say, who’s in charge since you’re locked up here? Only… when Ma was explaining this all to me, she said you brought everyone together. So you’re the one in charge. Or you were.”

“That’s a very good question. I’ll admit your mother and Daniel had been my favorites. Your mother’s a very vindictive woman. I was very glad to have her on my side. Daniel though… I do miss his pot pies…”

As Adam’s rage abated and his sadness creeped in, Peter let go of the intercom and quietly left the man to his thoughts. When he returned topside, his mother was waiting for him in Bob’s office. And she was very much not amused.

He got a lecture all the way to the car. And all the way to the house. He was lucky she hadn’t followed him upstairs. He took a shower, and stuffed a gym bag with everything he knew a person would need at the gym. If he were going to the gym that is.

Once he was ready to go, Peter swung by the kitchen to grab a snack on the go since it would be a bit before he had dinner and was caught by surprise by his father. The Wall snapped into place instinctively as he crossed the kitchen and looked through the fruit bowl, plucking an apple from the pile and shoving it into the end of his gym bag. Then an orange to eat along the way.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“The gym. It’s Friday. The agreement was I can go out one night a week wherever I want, alone, as long as I have my studies done and sat through Ma’s boring meetings all day.” He tossed the orange in the air and caught it. Then repeated the action. “So can I go now? I’m going to miss my bus.”

Arthur was about to say something more but Angela came in with the cook. “Should we save you anything dear?”

“What’s for dinner tonight?”

“Lamb with asparagus and-”

“I’ll grab a salad on the way home.” He caught his orange again before passing by his mother to drop a kiss to her temple and hurry the fuck out of there.

He ate his orange on the way, and indeed took the bus to the gym he chose, which happened to be rather close to the subway. It didn’t take long to find the right train that could get him to Queens.

When he followed the directions he’d copied down the last time they spoke, he wasn’t quite sure he’d found the right building. It looked nothing like what he had expected. Then again, the Nightmare behind Parkman’s wall had been an amalgamation of Los Angeles and New York City.

But when he double checked the building address, he found himself drawn forwards. The old longing that had led him to seek out Gabriel after the Carnival pulled at him stronger than ever and he could not ignore it’s call much longer.

Peter wasn’t all that surprised when he’d found the right door and lifted his hand to knock, it had been yanked open before he could even touch the wood. Peter gave a yelp as he was yanked inside and the door slammed behind him.

He got in late and sore in all the right places, but that was alright. His father was out cold. Always was when they had lamb. It’s the only time his mother got any of her paperwork done. He swung by her office to let her know he was home, and thought he got away scott-free until Angela said, without looking up from her files, “I hope he’s worth it Peter.”

“Who?”

“The watchmaker dear. I’m not as blind as you think I am. You had to get the dream ability from someone.” She signed a paper. Closed a file. Picked up another and promptly ignored him.

When he climbed into bed around midnight, Peter was still unsettled.

Things were going well for a change, and it was one of the rare times both his parents were out of town for a few days. So of course Peter jumped at the chance to take off, holding the maid and the cook to their continued silence about anything they learned about his comings and goings.

It was two nights and three days of bliss. Not having to pretend to be a teenager. Not having to watch what he said when and to whom. Just Chinese food, slightly oversized sweaters, and that blessed carnal pleasure Peter had thought he’d never be able to partake of again. It sounded cliche even in his head, but Peter would never take an inconvenient erection for granted again.

Even thinking it, Peter couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous that was. It was a low rumble that started deep in his chest, only to come out a chuckle as he tried to suppress it to keep from waking Gabriel. Which was a fool’s hope he realized when a lazy hand slid along his side while they lay spooned together on the bed. Warm lips pressed first against a light scar on the back of Peter’s neck, followed by a trail of kisses to his shoulder rather than his ear. It was telling, what direction Gabriel took. If he’d gone up Peter’s neck to his ear, he’s not really all that awake and motivated by instinct alone. To his shoulder though… He’s been awake for a while. Probably hadn’t even dozed off after, unlike usual.

“What has you so amused?” he asked, giving Peter’s skin one last nip as his hand moved down the plane of Peter’s stomach so his arm could drape across him a little more comfortably. A little loosely.

“It’s… Nothing,” Peter decides to say, turning over beneath Gabriel’s arm so that they’re facing one another. He settles his head against the pillow again, seeking the warmth with his cheek as Gabriel’s fingers stroke along the exposed skin of his lower back. Along the place where he’d broken his spine. There were no scars, now, but Peter didn’t need them there to remind him of the damage that had been there.

That large hand presses against his back, indicating he should slide forward a little. And he does, curling his arms close and bending his neck to burrow into the warm, hairy chest in front of him. A sigh of contentment escaped him as he felt the gentle pressure of Gabriel’s chin resting at the top of his head. At the slide of their legs against one another as they fitted together so naturally. As Gabriel’s body seemed to wrap around him protectively. Possessively.

They remained like this until the alarm went off. The muscles of Gabriel’s arm tensed as Peter began to stir. “I have to go,” he said, lifting his head to look up at the other man’s face.

“I want you to stay.”

“You know I can’t. Not yet.”

Gabriel glowered as Peter got up, slipping from the room to go take a shower. To wash away the evidence of what they’d been doing. He hated it. He hated this. The separation. The anxiety of never knowing when the other shoe would drop. Every time Peter walked out that door he felt like the mechanisms of a delicate clock, jostled and loosened and running too fast or too slow. Never correct; never on time. Always ever so slightly off and out of sync until Peter was with him again.

Fixing him. Fixing them. Like two perfectly fitting gears in a pocket watch. Lined up with absolute precision and set into place by the steady hand of Destiny.

He sat on the bed long enough to hear the water start running in the bathroom before he sighed and started to tidy up the bedroom. The bed was hastily made. With great reluctance he picked up the clothes that had hit the floor two days ago and hadn’t been picked back up since. The whole wad of cloth taken to the laundry hamper in the corner. Peter would of course wear the spare set of clothes he kept at Gabriel’s for his rare overnight stays. The dirty ones would be washed and kept aside for the next time.

He pulled on a loose pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt for the sake of not walking around naked as he continued his straightening of his apartment while Peter cleaned up.

When Peter left they didn’t say goodbye. They never did. Not now. Not after everything they had been through. Goodbye was an ending. A willing departure from one another. The only times they had ever said goodbye, and meant it, was staring down the might of the humans as they bore down on the old bunker in Nevada. Neither knowing if they would live beyond the dawn. And then… after three long days of uncertainty and sorrow while Gabriel had to come to terms with the inevitable loss of Peter’s death.

No, they never said goodbye now.

Instead…

“Come home again soon, Peter.”

“Home… I like the sound of that.”

Gabriel Gray was not having a good day.

It was, in fact, downright awful.

So awful that he was seriously contemplating killing the woman sitting across from him as he tried to read the newspaper and this time couldn’t blame it on being an accident or his ability making him do it.

“For the love of God mother will you just please stop trying to set me up with girls?!”

That… might not have been the best thing to say… surrounded by various ladies of his mother’s church who had never heard him raise his voice before, even if only to get someone’s attention. And to hear the quiet, shy, and awkward Gabriel Gray not only snap at his mother but take the Lord’s name in vain was something none of the Ladies of Christ Quilting Circle had ever expected on this fine Friday evening.

Though none of them would have known why he was so testy and annoyed, and if they had they’d never look him in the eye again.

“Gabriel a young man your age-”

He folded the newspaper down and frowned at Virginia Gray. “Mother, for the final time I am in a serious, committed relationship and I don’t want to take Darla Jacobs, Lori Hamilton, or Griselda Greenwater to see a film. Nor do I want to take them on a picnic in the park. Or to a museum, a jazz club, out for a coffee, out for a walk, or any other number of seemingly romantic situations!”

“You say that but you never bring her to meet your mother.”

Gabriel sighed as he shook his head and brought the paper back up.

“How am I supposed to know who you’re seeing or what you’re doing most Friday nights when you don’t even talk to your mother anymore.”

If it weren’t for the fact that it was his mother’s turn to host the damn quilting circle, he’d have left her there and gone home. As it was… he was kind of annoyed that Peter had been forced to cancel at the last minute without any explanation.

Peter’s Friday had started off the same way it always did. He got up, got dressed in business casual. Had breakfast with his parents. And then once he and his mother got into the car, things began to veer off course. They were not headed to the Hartsdale facility. In fact, they were heading to the airport.

“What… Ma, what’s going on?”

He was handed a cell phone. And it took Peter longer than it should have to realize it was a mobile phone to begin with. It had been so long since he’d seen one so… old.

“Call your… friend and cancel whatever plans you have made for the next two weeks.”

“Ma-”

“You cannot tell him what you don’t know,” she said, turning her attention to the window in some attempt to give her son the illusion of privacy.

So he did. He called Gabriel and spoke quietly, canceling their usual Friday plans. And the ones for the next week. When he was through, he hung up and handed it back. “Now can you tell me what’s going on?”

She looked at him for a long moment before her expression hardened. “Tonight your father will come home drunk. Tomorrow he will meet with his faction of the Founders with the exception of Daniel-”

“Mr. Linderman? But I thought he was with you.”

“He is. Which is why you will be in Las Vegas for the next two weeks. Protected and safe.”

“I can handle myself, Ma. I’ve been taking self defense classes at the gym-”

“We both know you don’t _actually_ go to the gym Peter. Though I imagine you do get quite a workout every Friday.”

He felt his cheeks warm up before looking away from her. “Future dreams… Right. Should have remembered that.”

“After the meeting tomorrow, your father intends to take you to a new research laboratory in New Jersey. He believes I don’t know about the Fort Lee facility. The only reason he has not attempted to take your ability from you is because while your ability is present every test we’ve collectively run shows it is underdeveloped. You should not be able to have precognitive dreams. And yet...”

“I don’t understand-”

“Neither do I. The dreams are foggy when you are concerned, Peter,” she said. “However what I do understand is that your father intends to take you and experiment on you. He wants to force you to push your ability to the limit and beyond before he decides if it is any use to him or not. And if it is-”

“He’ll take it from me. That’s his power, isn’t it? He steals from others.”

Angela nodded sadly. “He was like you once, an ability mimic. Though he could only hold onto one power at a time. A shake of a hand and he would go from alchemist to telepath. Another shake and he could see sounds. Another and suddenly he was invulnerable. But when he came back from Vietnam, he was… different. He could hold onto more than one ability, and guarded which ones he had collected like a dragon hoards gold. I still do not know all of what he is able to do.”

“How did you know my ability wasn’t the same as yours?”

She gave him an incredulous look, and he was reminded that she didn’t need guess or wonder. She had to know because she’d dreamed it. Just as she’d sussed out that there was something between him and the man she simply just called The Watchmaker, though she knew very well what his name was because he was the one who’d fixed her clock.

“Right. Dreams…” Peter muttered under his breath, turning his attention to the traffic outside the car.

Las Vegas was… not as fun as last time. But he did have a better room. In Linderman’s penthouse even. It was unsettling, actually, how much stuff was waiting for him when he got there. A wardrobe full of clothes in his exact size and the styles he preferred. A bookshelf with copies of a lot of the books he had at home. Comics. Even the walls were decorated with comic book superheroes and science fiction movie posters.

The catch?

If he went anywhere he had to have a bodyguard shadowing him. So he didn’t leave much the first few days, even just to go explore downstairs and try to sneak into the casino.

The first time he managed to lose his bodyguard and find a payphone to call Gabriel, he’d been found immediately after hanging up and dragged back to the hotel. Where he was made to sit in the hotel’s kitchen and listen to Mr. Linderman give him a lecture while making a pot pie.

The man’s obsession with pot pies was very weird. Not in a bad way, just… fascinatingly weird. Peter supposed everyone needed a hobby. Gabriel had his watches. Claire had her running list of creative ways to die. But in a world where he wasn’t fighting a war, where he wasn’t making decisions that led to entire parts of their army getting slaughtered - the only difference being would it be fast or would it be slow - he found he didn’t really have one of his own. Sure he read. He snuck around Primatech Hartsdale and talked to Adam from time to time. And then there were his Friday evenings with Gabriel…

“Hey,” Peter said, interrupting the lecture he was getting about how he was meant to be here in hiding and keeping himself safe, and how he’s lucky that one of his father’s men hadn’t found him instead and a zillion other things Peter wasn’t actually paying attention to. “Do you know how to make eggplant lasagna?”

Mr. Linderman cocked his head and Peter felt a sudden shock of curiosity from him. “Well… I know how to make lasagna. I suppose substituting eggplant for the meat wouldn’t be that difficult.”

Peter grinned and got up from the chair. “It’s a little different with the sauce, too. Where’s the aprons? There was a recipe I read while I was stuck in the chair and I’ve always wanted to try it.” It was a lie, he knew the recipe by heart. He used to make it for Emma all the time when she was… he cut that thought off right where it was and moved on. Gabriel wasn’t fond of it, he recalled. The man preferred a more traditional lasagna.

And so, the rest of his trip was spent either in the hotel kitchen or the kitchen of the penthouse showing Mr. Linderman how to make things other than God damned pot pies, when the man had time that is.

Every few days he’d hear from his mother about the state of things back home. Nathan and Heidi had set a wedding date at last. Arthur was still furious about Peter taking off. He seemed to think that Angela sent him to Japan.

It was during the last phone call, the one telling him it was safe for him to return home, that he learned why exactly it was Linderman he was sent to and not one he other ‘special’ friends.

Daniel Linderman, it turned out, was his godfather.

He couldn’t wait to get home - to his real home - and tell Gabriel the news. He actually had a bonafide mob boss for his godfather. “Well,” Peter had said to his mother before they’d said their farewells. “At least he’s not Italian. Think of all the _Godfather_ jokes Nathan could use on me.”

Things returned to semi-normal in the Petrelli household.

Peter’s father arranged for him to FINALLY take his GED testing.

And any talk of abilities in the home where his father could hear it was nil. At least in regards to Peter.

When he’d strolled into the Hartsdale facility for another brain scan and a few mild tests, a meeting or two as part of Angela’s grooming of him to take her place one day - now wasn’t that a complete 180 compared to the last time he went through this life - Peter wasn’t sure what he expected but it certainly wasn’t to be confronted with an angry Elle Bishop winging him with a stray bolt of electricity.

And it certainly wasn’t to be suddenly dropped like a brick when he’d reacted on instinct, charging forward with one hell of a war cry and taken the poor teenage girl down to the hard tile floor like she were a human and he was in battle.

No, this was not the Friday that Peter had imagined having when he woke up and had breakfast with his parents that morning.

“He nearly killed my daughter!”

“He neutralized a legitimate threat, Robert.”

“And now Elle is in surgery fighting for her life.”

“She is not, Bob. Don’t be so melodramatic. It’s a fractured skull at worst and a shattered ankle.”

Peter groaned, trying to raise his arm and wincing when he felt the pull of bandages and tape. “What happened?”

“Oh, you’re awake, good,” Peter heard Bob Bishop say. “Why did you try to kill my daughter?”

“I didn’t…”

He lifted his head to get a better idea of where he was. He was laid out on a chaise lounge in Bob’s office. “What happened?” he asked, looking around until he spotted his mother, Kaito, and Bob. Standing off to the side was a young man he recognized only from the pendant he was wearing.

Shit.

“Elle lost control of her ability in the hallway, dear,” Angela said, smoothing out the back of her skirt before sitting down. “She hit you and you defended yourself.”

“I…” he started, then brought one of his hands up to look at his bruised knuckles. This body hadn’t been through what he had. And sure those six months in the chair had built his upper body strength really well - even Gabriel had commented on it - but he was still a scrawny seventeen year old. “I guess… those classes at the gym paid off?”

Angela briefly raised a brow, but then relaxed her face. “Perhaps try to go a little easier next time, dear.”

“Is she going to be okay?”

“A broken leg. And at least a concussion with a minor skull fracture,” Angela replied.

“When I was coming to Mr. Bishop said she’s in surgery. I didn’t mean to-”

“You shattered her ankle. It happens all the time. She’ll be fine as long as she takes it easy and recovers,” Angela reassured him.

It didn’t change the fact that he could feel Bob’s anger from across the room. The man wasn’t going to let this go without making him pay, and with how damn sadistic he had to be to experiment so… extensively on his own daughter, Peter didn’t want to push it.

“Couldn’t you just-” he started, but cut himself off.

“Couldn’t we just what, Peter?”

Mentally he started grasping at straws, trying to find a way to complete that sentence without giving them the idea to use Adam for further experimentation if they didn’t already know about the properties of his blood. “Call Mr. Linderman to heal her up?”

“No. We don’t ask our friend to come for every minor injury,” Angela said. “Besides, this will be a lesson to her, and her father, that she needs to learn better control over her ability.” She glared at one of her oldest friends, causing Bob to flinch, before standing. “Now get up Peter. I dare say you’ve been through enough today.”

“What about the tests and-”

“That can wait until next week. You need to sleep to do half of them anyway and you’ve just had quite a nap. Why don’t you go get something to eat and occupy yourself while the adults get down to business, hmm?”

“Yeah…” Peter said, pushing himself up with his good arm as the two men parted to let Angela pass between them. Bob wasted no time following but Kaito lingered.

Kaito quietly looked at Peter a moment, carefully considering his words before he spoke. “You have very quick reflexes, Peter. Despite your accident last year, you are very light on your feet. Have you considered pursuing agent training once you have completed your education?”

“No thanks. It’s unethical, what the Company does to people like me.”

“And yet here you are. Allowing yourself to be tested. Observed.”

“But I agreed to it. Sure, my dad kind of forced it on me. I didn’t have to cooperate. I could have fought tooth and nail.”

Kaito nodded. “I had heard you became very proficient with throwing yourself out of your chair when you chose to be obstinate.”

“And fell down half a flight of stairs before someone caught me with their ability,” Peter replied. “The point is, sir, at any time I can go to that guy over there in the corner and have my head rearranged and walk out that door. Never look back. Ma won’t like it, but it can be done. The people down in the cells though?”

“Many are a danger to themselves or society.”

“Yeah, the ones on Level 5. But sir, what about the harmless ones? I saw a field report a couple weeks back from an agent based in Texas. He and his partner bagged and tagged a man who’s only power is the ability to grow his hair at will. He was held against his will without ever knowing why for three days before his memory was erased and he was released.”

“And where would you see a field report when you do not have clearance nor access to such records?”

Peter imagined the look on his face was very much like his mother’s when someone asked her a stupid question. “You know my mother. Do you really need to ask me that question?”

The man seemed to consider what he said before nodding subtly. As Peter had seen him do to his own mother when she pointed out to him what to her was obvious. Maybe he really was a lot like his mother after all. Now that was a scary thought. “Let me ask you something, Mr. Nakamura,” Peter said, getting his attention back. “What are you going to do when Hiro’s power comes in?”

“Hiro… I fear has been passed over.”

“I know Ma says I’m not supposed to tell people most of what I see in my dreams or the things that I learn about them, but trust me. Hiro’s going to surprise you. Hell, he’s going to surprise himself. And when that happens are you going to bring him in yourself and convince him to cooperate with having his abilities tested? Or are you going to wait until a pair of Agents come and take him down to Level 5?”

“They will not put my son in Level 5!”

Peter shrugged and got to his feet. “Well, sir, it was nice chatting with you. But I’m starving and if I’m going to have enough energy for the gym later I’d better have a really big lunch.”

Thanksgiving.

The second Thanksgiving since he had come back to his younger body. The second one that he spent with his mother in his apartment with the radio playing Christmas carols - which he also wasn’t too fond of for reasons outside anything to do with powers and abilities and time travel and murder - and Gabriel didn’t think he could take it anymore.

To be fair, he shouldn’t have invited his mother to his apartment to do the holiday. Again. But he really didn’t want to go out. And he really just wanted to stay home and stay in bed and pretend the day wasn’t happening. But… his mother had no one. No one but him.

He may not have had Nathan Petrelli rattling around in his head anymore like the ghost of Jacob Marley, but he was entirely present - if only a little suppressed at the start of the meal - for the worst Thanksgiving he’d ever experienced in his life. Coincidentally, it was also the best sweet potato pie he’d ever eaten. And he didn’t normally like sweet potato pie.

And yet here he was, the sleeves of his good plaid shirt - burgundy with muted blues and greens - rolled up and his hands covered in drying potato starch. He peeled potato after potato for his mother while she set about carefully placing miniature marshmallows on the top of the yams that neither of them were going to eat anyway. Neither of them liked yams but they always had them because it’s what Martin had liked. His sweater had been left draped on the back of his sofa hours ago when his mother had insisted he help her prepare the turkey. The turkey that was always too large and barely fit the pan he had in his kitchen. A pan that he’d never used in all the time he’d lived there both then and now.

Last year he had managed to convince her to use a disposable aluminum pan.

There was a knock at the door. Gabriel nearly sliced his finger with the paring knife (he really should have invested in a vegetable peeler after Peter had insisted it made so many things easier) when the knocks got louder.

Virginia Gray didn’t waste a second, dashing from the kitchen to answer her son’s front door before Gabriel could wash his hands and try to race her to it. There were very few people that would come knocking on his door. Two of them were neighbors who often asked him to water their plants when they were gone for the weekend. The other was Peter and he did NOT want to have to deal with that can of worms right now on today of all days.

But he was too late. Virginia stood with Gabriel’s front door open wide, her son wiping his hands with a dish towel as he tried to rush out of the kitchen and nearly tripped over his own two feet. And Peter standing there in the hall, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot with a pie in one hand, a casserole dish in the other, rumpled shirt, messed up hair, and a large bruise on his cheek. “Hey sorry if this is a bad time but uh… I really don’t want to be at my parents’ place right now.”

“Oh dear look at you! Gabriel, go get a bag of peas. You poor thing come in. Here, let me get these from you.”

“It’s a peach pie in that one, ma’am. And-”

She peered into the casserole dish. “Green bean casserole! We haven’t had this since you were a boy! Do you remember when Mrs. Jenkins-”

“Yes mother. I remember,” Gabriel said, forcing a smile on his face. “Here, why don’t I take these and my friend can come to the kitchen for that bag of peas.”

“But what about the yams-”

“I’ll finish topping the yams as soon as I finish peeling the potatoes mother. Why don’t you sit and take a load off. Listen to your holiday carols and let me finish with the dinner.”

Virginia, her hands now free as he had taken the two dishes from her while speaking, put her hands on each cheek and smiling proudly at him. “You’re such a good boy, Gabriel.”

Peter followed him into the kitchen, going straight to the freezer and rummaging around for a bag of frozen corn he knew was in there from last Friday. He winced as he touched it to his face. Gabriel found some counter space still free for the pie and the casserole dish before whirling around and closing the gap between them. He glanced towards the pass-through to the living room where his mother was now seated with the cross stitching she’d brought with her. Humming along to some song or another. Satisfied she wasn’t paying them any attention, he put an arm around Peter’s waist and held him closer.

“Not that I’m not happy to see you,” he said quietly. “But what the hell are you doing here?”

“Short version,” Peter said, adjusting his bag of corn on his face. “Dad’s drunk. So is uncle Tim. The cook was deported. The maid quit. The caterers canceled. Simone unleashed some kind of weird ass lust pheromone because she started freaking out so the Deveauxs couldn’t make it, which left us with some of my dad’s friends. Ma’s doing damage control and Nathan’s in Martha’s Vineyard with Heidi and her family.”

“So you what? Ran off with the pie and a casserole?”

“I wasn’t going to until Mr. Fletcher got handsy thinking I was his wife.”

“Is that who hit you?”

“No. That was my cousin Bedilia who thought I was spying on her in the bathroom when really I was just trying to find somewhere to get away from Mr. Fletcher.”

“You’ll have to explain all of this to me later, once my mother’s gone home. But for now… How do we… I haven’t told her about us. Well, nothing detailed. Only that I’m seeing someone and not interested in the girls she keeps trying to get me to talk to at her church.”

“Friend? You fixed my clock while I was injured and we had stuff in common?”

“That could work...”

“Or you can just be honest and up front about it?”

Gabriel gave him a look that spoke volumes. And most of it was asking if Peter was, indeed, an idiot. A pretty idiot, but still an idiot. “Are all members of the Petrelli family born with this innate need to destroy every holiday they touch?”

“Hey, you’re the one that ruined Thanksgiving for the rest of us. Ruining Halloween for you in retaliation was justified. Besides, I’m injured and brought you your favorite pie. Cut me some slack.” Under the unrelenting dark brown stare Peter sighed. “Alright, fine. But you’re telling her before I come home to stay.”

“And when will that be exactly?”

“There’s a few things I want to tie up at Primatech first. I’m hoping no later than March.”

“Do you boys need any help in there?!” Virginia called from her place on the couch. They jumped apart by about a foot, causing Peter to elbow the refrigerator and Gabriel to nearly knock over the bowl of potatoes he’d been peeling.

“No! No, we’re fine!” Peter called out. “Gabriel was just making sure I was alright!”

After the corn had mostly thawed, Peter put it back in the freezer, checked to make sure his lover’s mother wasn’t watching, and gave him a peck on the cheek. “What does she like to drink? I’ll fix her something and go introduce myself. And no, I won’t tell her we’re sleeping together.”

“There’s some ginger ale in the fridge door. Pour some of that over ice, add a splash of cranberry juice. She’ll think it’s fancy.”

“Got it,” Peter said, setting to the task as Gabriel returned to peeling potatoes.

“And Peter, be sure to use a coaster.”

“I thought you didn’t care if I left rings on the table.”

“It’s a holiday. Have some manners,” Gabriel replied with a smile.

Maybe Thanksgiving wouldn’t be so bad after all. Now if he could just get his mother to let him turn off the radio for an hour…

Peter’s presence certainly helped keep him calmer than normal around his mother. He even laughed, and could feel his smiles coming easier as Peter told her stories to keep her distracted while Gabriel worked in the kitchen.

He had introduced himself as a friend of her son, calling Gabriel his best friend. He periodically refilled her glass and got her a few cookies to nibble before telling her he was going to help in the kitchen. It wasn’t a lie so much as it was his desire to get away from her for a few minutes to emotionally recharge.

“Your mother is exhausting. How do you handle this?”

Without missing a beat as Gabriel moved to start setting the table. “Well last time I jammed a pair of sewing scissors into her chest,” he said low enough for only Peter to hear. He could feel the disapproving look Peter was giving him behind his back. “Though I did make the mistake later of touching the murder weapon after aquiring shape shifting. That was not one of my most sound decisions-”

“Can you honestly say any decision during that time of your life was sound?” Peter snarked at him.

Gabriel shrugged and stepped back from the table. It wasn’t half bad, really, for someone that was hopeless in a kitchen to begin with. When they had celebrated Thanksgiving, both he and Peter had always been shooed out of the kitchen because they didn’t do the dressing correctly. Or there weren’t enough mushrooms in the casserole. Or the rolls were just a little too golden brown for Emma’s liking. They learned to just stay out of her way.

He watched Peter from the corner of his eye. “I could argue that every poor decision from then led to our meeting, and subsequently… This.”

“I could always throw you off the roof for old time’s sake,” Peter replied with a small, secret smile. “Come on. I think we’ve stalled long enough.

Dinner was… not as Gabriel had expected. Peter and his mother got on rather well. He was good at distracting her and navigating around subjects he knew Gabriel would rather not discuss.

Like the ‘girlfriend’ who has yet to meet his mother. Peter nearly choked on a piece of turkey and had to take a sip of water to clear his throat afterwards. And so Peter steered her in another direction entirely, talking about all the things that could be made with the leftovers.

Peter didn’t miss the very appreciative look he got after that.

Eventually though, Virginia asked a question Peter wasn’t exactly sure how to answer.

How did Peter and her son meet. After all, Peter was a bit young and shouldn’t he still be in school?

“It’s a funny story, sort of,” Peter started, glancing across the table as he stabbed at the remnants of his mashed potatoes. “My family’s pretty well off, so we have, well, had a cook and a maid. They got into an argument and the maid threw a shoe at the cook. He ducked and it hit the mantle in the family parlor. It wouldn’t have been a problem but they broke my mother’s favorite clock.”

“An 1875 Ingraham 8-day spring mechanism Venetian mantle display piece,” Gabriel rattled off. “Alligatored finish. Original movement, which was very surprising to find and rather difficult to track down the correct parts for replacement and repair. I was lucky to locate an unfinished custom clock by a colleague in Italy utilizing some of the more difficult to replace parts.” He wasn’t even paying attention to the other two people sitting at the table. His head slightly down, his shoulders hunched just enough to show he realized he was rambling and was slightly embarrassed by it. So he didn’t see the softening and fondness of Peter’s expression. Or the look of pride in his mother’s eyes. “Sorry,” he mumbled, picking up his glass of ginger ale. “Please, continue Peter.”

He did look up when he felt a pressure to the side of his shoe and realized that Peter had slid his foot forward to make contact where his mother couldn’t see. Peter was smiling at him as he picked up from where he’d been been interrupted. Virginia had praised her son when Peter said he was the only one willing to come out to his parents home rather than insist he brings the clock to the shop. Especially after learning why Peter couldn’t bring it to him in person.

“Your poor, poor child… And now look at you! A little worse for wear…”

“I like the scar,” Peter said defensively over a slice of peach pie he picked at rather than ate. He really didn’t like peach pie.

“I think it makes you look more mature,” Gabriel said honestly.

“Good looks aren’t aren’t everything, Mrs. Gray. Besides,” he added. “Every time I look in the mirror I’m reminded not to make the same mistake twice. I might not be so lucky next time.”

After dessert, and a bit more rambling conversation with Virginia, they sent her off with a bag of leftovers. The rest they put away before collapsing onto the sofa. Peter took off his shoes, unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt and curled up against Gabriel’s side. “When we take over the world, I’m cancelling Thanksgiving forever.”

They spent the night still clothed, in bed, talking quietly about… everything. About nothing. About that horrible Thanksgiving with the ghost of Nathan and that damn sweet potato pie. About their first Thanksgiving with Emma and the time Gabriel set the oven on fire because he was impatient and already in a bad mood and just wanted to hurry it up and it’s not like they couldn’t buy a new oven anyway.

And when they were all talked out, making peace with things they hadn’t realized they needed to make peace with, Gabriel stroked Peter’s bruised cheek with the back of his hand, the action a silent question.

So Peter started, quietly, to tell him why he had grabbed a pie and a casserole and fled to Queens knowing for a fact it’d be hard to get around because of the damn Macy’s parade and all the other inconveniences Thanksgiving in New York City had to offer.

Adam was just as Peter had found him the last time. And the time before that. And nearly every time he came down here. Hands folded beneath his head, ankles crossed as the rest of his body was stretched out on the bed.

“Hello Adam,” Peter said after pressing the intercom button.

“I was beginning to think you’d forgotten all about me, Peter.”

“Forget about you? Never.”

“Well you have a funny way of showing it. Disappearing for weeks on end. Or has it been months? It’s hard to tell here as the years wear on.”

“Too long,” Peter admitted. “Tell me, do the others know what your blood can do?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“So they don’t know your blood can bring back the dead. Heal nearly any injury.”

Adam was on his feet in no time. Despite being basically a caged animal, the man’s stance was rather intimidating.

“The older someone like you is, the more potent the blood. Long term storage is nearly impossible unless you have someone on your side that can freeze time. Unfortunately they can’t freeze time indefinitely. But the problem with that will be solved sometime in the next twenty years.” He watched the immortal man, examining the warring emotions coming off him. So Peter took a chance while the man was confused by his own thoughts.

“They’re restarting the work on the virus. Kaito refuses to release strain 138 for further testing. He and Dr. Pratt still believe you wanted to release it.” Peter says, watching Adam’s face as he continues. “Ten years from now Bob Bishop’s R&D division will have advanced the research of strain 137 to human trials. Strain 137 will mutate and the cure that was developed by Dr. Mohinder Suresh will no longer be effective. He will experiment with the blood of a girl with rapid cellular regeneration and create a new cure for the mutated strain 137. After Kaito Nakamura’s death Bob Bishop will authorize the use of strain 138 for experimentation. It is destroyed before then as are all samples of strains 50-137 both the original and mutated. Research into the Shanti Virus ceases after the death of Bob Bishop and my mother seizes control of the Company.”

“How would you know all of this? This is too detailed, even for one of your mother’s dreams.” Confusion underlined with anger and a hint… a hint of curiosity. Adam moved slowly, deliberately towards the window. His blue eyes taking in all of the teenage boy he could see through the window. 

“Approximately 13 years from now, our existence will be exposed by a short-sighted college co-ed. Fifteen to twenty years from now the Company will be dissolved rather than made an example of. As a direct result of this, when war begins between us and them, the humans will begin using the Company’s research to reverse engineer technology and bio-weapons to use against us. The worst among them will be called a Cure. It eliminates the genetic marker by sterilizing us, removing our abilities, and then killing us. It becomes the most effective weapon.”

Adam stood staring at him with his mouth slightly agape. Peter could feel the horror creeping into the man’s emotional field. But he pressed on. “Non-Specials are inoculated. Any child conceived afterwards with the genetic marker is miscarried or stillborn. Those without, those that are considered pure humans, get to live. This is how we become extinct.”

“You didn’t dream this, did you Peter?” Adam’s voice was quiet as he began to work through the information. The level of detail was beyond what a precognitive dreamer would normally be able to interpret. The near perfect recall meant this boy… no… no he wasn’t a boy and hadn’t been for a long time now. He wasn’t precognitive at all. But what was he? The two stood staring at one another. Peter down from the elevated hallway outside the cell, and Adam up from his cage. “No… No this is far too detailed for simple precognition,” he finally said his thoughts aloud. Adam was the first to look away, taking a few steps back. “This is…” His eyes widened in realization before he noticed Peter was now walking away. Adam went to the window, slamming his hands against it with sudden urgency. “You’ve met one! You’ve been sent back! Haven’t you Peter! Don’t leave me here to rot with this! Get back here you self-righteous son of a bitch!”

Gabriel had missed their normal Friday meet, having found the perfect excuse to leave town for Nevada for the weekend.

And now, it was the day after Peter’s 18th birthday. Christmas Eve. And the man himself lay stretched out on his stomach, naked, as he read through a file from the stack of them Gabriel had brought home with him.

“How exactly did you convince your parents to let you leave the house today?”

“I’m supposed to be last minute shopping. By the way, I told Ma I’m getting my godfather a pocket watch.”

“How thoughtful of you,” he replied, sliding back onto the bed. He propped himself up on his side, reaching out with one of his hands to trace the curve of Peter’s spine, eliciting a shudder from him, but little else as he continued to read. “How much longer do we play pretend, Peter? I’m getting tired of always letting you walk out that door.”

“Not much longer. I’ve got Adam worked up now and Kaito’s at least giving some thought to Hiro maybe not being quite such a disappointment.”

“And your ability?”

Peter shrugged and closed the file. He let it go and watched it fall to the stack on the floor at the end of the bed. Gabriel’s hand stopped stroking him along his spine. Instead those dexterous fingers had traveled lower. They traced around the outside of the warm, red hand-print standing out against the pale flesh of Peter’s ass. The empath gasped as Gabriel deliberately dragged his nails across the tender skin.

Talk of the Company, of plans to change the future, and old files stolen from a 60s testing site were soon forgotten and replaced with sinful whispers and little gasps and the crescent indentions of nails on milky skin before fingers dragged across like claws, pressing and digging and drawing harsh red lines to accompany the slow rising purple bruises from where teeth have sunk hard and deep.

And Peter screams when his head is pulled back hard by his hair. He wishes he had regeneration. That they both did. He wanted it to hurt. Really hurt. He wanted to taste copper on his tongue and feel it as every mark and wound is healed and reopened and healed again.

Just thinking about it now, about what used to be and what they could have again has him writhing and jerking and nearly howling as Gabriel hammers into him hard enough the bed is shaking, the headboard slammed into the wall. And he comes undone, utterly and completely when Gabriel leans down, and Peter can feel the dark, thick hair from his chest sticking to his own sweat slicked back. And that voice… God that voice so unlike the shy, almost timid watchmaker from Queens that he pretended he still was. With just three words spoken in that deep, seductive and unforgiving voice it’s like he’s back behind the wall._ “Scream for me.” _Back when everything was simple and it was just the two of them. The two of them and the Wall and the hate and the rage and the violence that brought them together time and time again. Coloring their every conversation and interaction.

And he does exactly what those words order him to do as he paints the sheets beneath him with his third load of thick, white cum in the last six hours. He screams it. The name for the Hunger, for the beast that’s dug its claws deep into his heart and laid claim to his very soul.

And hearing it, hearing Peter desperately cry out not for weak little Gabriel Gray but instead for the all consuming monster hidden just under the skin, _ Sylar _ \- Gabriel - _ Sylar _fucks him through his orgasm, slamming deep and hard just the way he knows Peter likes it. Driving him to distraction and the edge of pain again through over-sensitivity. Filling him - marking him - owning him so completely as he sinks his teeth hard into Peter’s shoulder and tastes it. He tasted of sweat and desperation and anger and copper on his tongue and he wants to pull and rip and tear but instead…

Instead he lets go, licking the little bit of spilled blood from his lips as Peter hisses from both the tenderness of a fresh wound and the sudden loss of Gabriel’s spent cock in his ass.

Apologies are silent actions and featherlight, reverent kisses across bruised and broken skin beneath the warm, cleansing spray of a shower head. It’s conveyed through the gentle touch of a hydrogen peroxide dampened washcloth and the slight embarrassment in Gabriel’s cheeks as he dutifully treats Peter’s shoulder where he’s bitten too hard. As fingers that bruise and break and make Peter feel so God damn alive also carefully apply dots of super glue to puncture wounds so he doesn’t bleed into his nice, crisp white shirt he’d worn out for his last minute shopping trip.

They embrace at the door, the kiss that says ‘_ come back home to me soon _’ is no different than it is every week. No different than it has ever been. But Peter hangs on a little longer. He lingers in the doorway just a few more seconds than the last time, not eager to return to a life of make-believe, deception, and backstabbing.

He feels a hand slip into his, giving it a squeeze before Gabriel drops a chaste kiss from the open door. “Merry Christmas, Peter.”

And Peter smiles. He squeezes that hand once before pulling his own away. “Merry Christmas, Gabriel,” he says before reluctantly departing.

Peter is still sore a few days after Christmas. His shoulder is… a little better. Stiff, but better. No infections that he can tell. Gabriel did a good job with disinfecting and then sealing the punctures his teeth had made. His mother’s knowing looks didn’t help any.

Looks that Nathan hadn’t missed.

Which led to the interrogation over lunch at Nathan’s favorite Thai place. 

“She must be pretty wild to leave you sore days later, Peter.”

“What?”

“It doesn’t take seven hours to buy a pocket watch and a couple of bottles of perfume.”

Peter put down his fork and blinked at him, trying to decide exactly what to say to that. “Did you not take me to see _ Jingle All The Way _ when it came out last year? Shopping on Christmas Eve is exactly like that. Only worse because what I wanted to get my godfather was something you have to go to a specialty store for, and most sane people are closed that day.”

“It was a pocket watch. You can go down to any big box chain store and-”

“I can’t expect you to understand, Nathan. Especially since you’re the one who gets other people to do your last minute shopping for you,” Peter said as he shook his head as he deflected. “Did Heidi like her perfume? I couldn’t remember which one it was she liked and you never told me-”

“You at least got the brand right. Apparently it’s some new scent they came out with. She loved it.”

Of course Peter got it right. She wore the scent for years. He’d spent most of a Monday sniffing bottles of perfume at a couple of different stores before he found the right one. And while part of him still hated her for what she’d done to her own sons right before the war started, her sons didn’t even exist yet - might never exist. But at the same time, if he could change the course of history, even a little, then there was a chance that she would stay the same kind, compassionate woman Nathan had - would - marry.

“Now that you’ve tried to change the subject, Pete, when are you bringing her to meet the family?”

Peter choked on his noodles. Nathan laughed as he spluttered before managing to clear his airway again and spitting a wad of noodles into his napkin with tears in his eyes and a glare at his older brother.

Nathan waited until his brother had gotten himself back under control, and had a mouthful of food, before saying, “You should bring her to the wedding!”

Nathan wasn’t laughing so much when he was scraping spicy noodles out of his hair and off his face.

January 2nd, 1998 began quite normally for Peter Petrelli.

He woke up at 6AM. Showered and took care of some personal business. He dressed, grabbed his nearly full journal and pen, then headed downstairs for breakfast around 7:30.

And this is where things went… different.

The new cook had laid out a larger than normal spread. His father was seated in his usual place. His mother in hers. Peter slid into his usual seat to his mother’s right and stared at the two extra seats closer to his father.

“Are we expecting guests?” he asked, trying to ignore his mother’s worry and concern. He feigned typical young adult curiosity as he examined the emotions coming off his father. Excitement. Amusement. And something familiar that he couldn’t quite place… it felt oily and sick. Almost manic in glee.

“They just left,” Arthur said, not even looking at his son as he spoke. “I just heard a most entertaining story and it makes me wonder what else has been hidden from me.”

Peter looked to his mother, watching her wince as she picked at her meal, her worry spiking tenfold. Before he could ask if she was alright, he felt like someone was taking a hammer to his head.

Arthur Petrelli continued to seem completely unconcerned.

“What’s in that notebook you always carry around with you?”

“Ideas,” he said, trying his best not to let the pain show on his face, even as he feels the blood starting to drip from his nose. That Wall was not about to come down if he had anything to say about it. “I’m writing a book. Science fiction. Super heroes. That kind of thing. You wouldn’t be interested.”

“You’d be surprised Peter. Much like I was when Bob told me what you did to his daughter this morning.”

Peter’s pulse quickened. He looked back to his mother to find her dabbing a napkin to her nose. When it came away, he saw the dark splotch of red. Of blood. The push against his mind’s defenses strengthened and he could feel himself starting to buckle.

“He suggests you should start agent training now that you’re an adult. Imagine my surprise when he suggested that I had already been testing your ability. An ability that I was forced to forget you possessed.” Arthur set down his fork, and Peter felt Arthur withdraw for just a moment before his journal was snatched from beside his empty plate by an invisible hand. His eyes widened in surprise - and he could feel his mother’s as well.

Arthur thumbed through the journal as Peter tried to get up from his chair, finding himself stuck fast. He couldn’t move his head, but his eyes, he found he could still look around. He could watch his mother from the corner of his eye as she, too, was frozen in place. “Very interesting… I think I’ll hang onto this for now. Claircognizance is a very powerful ability, Peter. From what I’ve learned this morning you’ve been able to push this ability very far in such a short amount of time. Combined as yours happens to be with your mother’s ability it will be very… useful. For someone who knows how to put it to best use.”

His headache returned as he felt his father practically battery ramming the Wall he had erected in his mind. To protect himself from the horrors he had lived through. To hide his secrets and the future he had escaped from.

A telephone rang.

And things happened so quickly he wasn’t sure exactly what was going on.

A telephone rang, the new maid came in to announce it, Angela screamed for Peter to run. Peter had moved on instinct, much as he had when he’d been hit with Elle’s lightning. A fork was slammed into his father’s free hand, pinning it to the table before the journal was snatched back. Peter was careful, though, to never let his skin touch his father’s. He knew what the man could do and didn’t want to lose his powers to the man a second time. The maid screamed and Peter ran for the stairs, his mother shouting and his father ripping the fork free of his hand with a snarl of anger.

Peter slammed his bedroom door and barricaded it, for all the good it would do against someone with fucking telekinesis. His old book-bag from his wheelchair days was emptied and clothes shoved into it. He smashed a ceramic baseball bank and scooped all the change and dollar bills into the bag before he grabbed up his wallet. The journal was tossed in and the bag zipped up.

He was at the window when he felt the boiling rage from downstairs approaching closer and closer as his father made his way upstairs. It hit him like a slap as his dresser was effortlessly moved out of the way and his door opened.

“Peter!”

Peter turned his head, one leg still hanging inside the window as he tried to bail. He hung on tight when he felt the tug of Arthur’s invisible hands trying to yank him back inside.

“Fuck you, Arthur!” Peter shouted angrily, hoping against hope that he might have actually been able to copy something - anything from the man’s power bank of abilities to help him escape.

Books flew off his shelves, and a smile broke out across his face. Books. Action figures. Anything that wasn’t nailed down was flung telekinetically across the bedroom, pelting the man as Peter made his escape. The drop off the roof wasn’t exactly pleasant, and though he now had copied a power from his father, it had been a while since he’d used it or any other power but Empathy.

So the landing wasn’t good and he twisted his ankle. It was pure adrenaline that helped keep Peter moving. Kept him looking over his shoulder.

Gabriel was shocked when he arrived at the Long Island storage unit he’d rented to hold some of their stolen assets and found Peter there, barely awake and curled in on himself.

He wanted to kick himself for waiting until after work to come.

He didn’t say anything as he helped Peter to his feet, taking his bag and leaning in to take most of his weight after noticing the man favoring one of his legs.

They took a cab back to Queens, and Peter was given a couple of over the counter painkillers before Gabriel was able to scrounge up a few left over from his old prescription a year and a half prior. From the supposed concussion he’d gained from falling in his bathroom that summer night of his ‘arrival’.

He was glad to have the man home, finally. But the state of him was something that made him long for his abilities. Long for the power that he’d once had that would allow him to exact revenge on whomever was responsible for Peter’s current state.

Instead he settled for making Peter comfortable in their bed. Working to try and get the swelling down as he slept and try to sort out where they were going to go from there.

It could have been said that Gabriel Gray was a very calm, mild mannered, and unobtrusive young man. His neighbors saw him as a polite, helpful, if a little awkward resident of the building. He kept mostly to himself, and liked to tinker with his little gadgets and clocks. The worst that could be said about him was that he once had a rather noisy grandfather clock in his apartment that he’d been working on once. After it had been fixed, the annoyance of its constant chiming, which really only annoyed those who shared a wall, ceiling, or floor with him, went away for good.

Those who knew him by this reputation viewed him as a pleasant person. Not someone they would like to spend more than an elevator ride or two with, as he did appear quite boring and uninteresting. But no one really had anything all that negative to say about the watchmaker.

So one could imagine Mr. Linderman’s surprise when his personal bodyguards had been quickly incapacitated when the man had unlocked the door of his shop to find unwanted customers waiting for him on the morning of Monday, January 5th.

He was, of course, impressed with the young man that held a screwdriver to his throat, pressing the tip against his neck rather hard as his glasses sat on the end of his nose and the young man stared down at him with murder in his gaze.

“That was very good, Mr. Gray. Clearly I underestimated you.”

“Who the hell are you and why are you here?”

Blue eyes looked past the young man who hadn’t even taken off his coat before breaking the neck of one man and slamming the other face first into a rather beautiful, if rather pointy, decorative clock with a rather vicious sort of finesse that spoke of experience that the young man’s age defied.

His hesitance to answer the question was underlined by the pressure at his neck. “If I may direct your attention to my breast pocket, Mr. Gray?”

Daniel Linderman kept his eyes on the man’s face as a hand moved to quickly delve into the breast pocket of his charcoal colored suit. A card. A very familiar card. He’d given it to Peter himself. It was one of two.

“I was summoned for a meeting with some business partners Friday afternoon. Saturday I attended this meeting and then Sunday my oldest and dearest friend came to see me in the middle of the night with this card. She had a dream that her husband was going to kill my godson unless you, Mr. Gray, led me to him. And if you drive that hand tool through my throat, then Peter I imagine is going to be very upset with you.”

That night Peter, fully healed from his escape from his parents’ house, and Gabriel boarded a private jet with a mobster, bound for the west coast. Files and other important documents were packed into Gabriel’s luggage. Linderman’s men packed up the apartment for shipping. Gabriel called his mother to tell her he was moving. She was, understandably, upset until Peter had taken the phone from him and told the woman that his godfather was very insistent on hiring Gabriel to oversee the maintenance of a very important collection of antique clocks he had.

It wasn’t exactly a lie - Mr. Linderman did have some delicate pieces in his collection and he had been doing a bit of snooping before the man had unlocked his shop that morning. He was legitimately impressed by the quality of work.

By Tuesday night, both men were sitting on an inflatable mattress in an unfurnished two bedroom house in Los Angeles. Too exhausted to do much of anything more than stare at the wall.

“At least my dad didn’t steal my powers,” Peter said after the longest while. “And I uh… copied one from him.”

“Really? Which one?”

Peter reached out with his hand towards one of the three suitcases sitting in front of the stairs that led up to the bedrooms. It wobble a little before it fell over. But that’s about all it did.

He laughed.

And so did Gabriel.

It was a high, almost hysterical laugh as Peter tried to move it again, but only managed to make another one wobble. Which made the watchmaker laugh even harder.

“I mean,” Peter managed to get out after a few minutes, “It could be worse. I could have copied telepathy. Neither one of us has had a good experience with telepathy in LA.”

It took a little bit but Gabriel managed to settle down. When the pair of them lay on the air mattress in the dark, Peter just drifting off to sleep, Gabriel leaned in and whispered into his ear, “Thank God we don’t have a basement.”

Peter had trouble sleeping as he tried not to start laughing again. Gabriel, though, managed to sleep just fine.


End file.
